Various types of medical devices employ a needle for piercing the skin of a patient for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. One such device is a phlebotomy or blood collection device that includes a needle for piercing a blood vessel of the patient to allow blood to be sampled from the patient. When the needle is inserted into the blood vessel of the patient, blood is withdrawn through the needle into a vacuum collection tube. Handling of such needle-bearing medical devices after the needle is withdrawn from the patient can result in transmission of various pathogens, most notably human immune virus (HIV), to uninfected medical personnel, due to an inadvertent needle stick.
Since the mid-1980s, concern over the risk of accidental needle stick injuries has spawned a number of design approaches for safety needle devices. Such devices can be broadly categorized as sliding sheath needle devices, wherein a physical barrier is positioned about the needle tip after use, and as needle-retraction devices, wherein the tip of the needle is retracted into the device after use.
The known devices suffer from one of several problems, including complicated structures that increase the cost of manufacturing the device. A safety needle product may be safe, but if it is too expensive, it will not be accepted, and the benefits of the safety product will never be recognized by the medical community. In addition, many devices require awkward or cumbersome actions to cause the needle to retract. The more complicated it is to retract a needle, the less likely it is that the medical professional will take the time to retract the needle, particularly in emergency situations.
In addition, in the field of phlebotomy, many of the known devices do not adequately protect against inadvertent contact with the non-patient tip of the needle. Since a person's finger is generally smaller than the rearward opening of a phlebotomy device, the rearward end of the needle remains a safety concern after it has been contaminated with a patient's blood. The known medical devices do not adequately address the protection needed to efficiently shield both the forward and rearward ends of the needle.